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The present invention relates generally to contest participation over the Internet, and more specifically to a system and method for supporting a chance-based contest on the World Wide Web (WWW).
In recent years, the rapidly increasing cost of education has greatly outpaced the personal incomes of many people. At the same time, the significance of education as a determiner of career opportunities has never been greater. As a result, many individuals and families are presently faced with financial difficulties related to paying for pre-school, kindergarten, primary/secondary school, college, and graduate or professional school. College students, in particular, are increasingly being forced to finance large portions of their education using loans. The potentially large payments of such loans place an undesirable, immediate burden on graduates just as they are entering the workforce. Moreover, the need for education related financial assistance of all kinds has grown beyond the availability of current funding mechanisms. Many persons today are foregoing participation in educational opportunities that would otherwise be open to them but for their inability to pay.
Also in recent years, marketers and advertisers have become more and more interested in gathering information related to the interests and buying habits of college and pre-college age consumers. The ability to reach these potential customers is considered key to the success of many products, services, and the companies that provide them. Accordingly, a database including information related to college and pre-college aged persons and their families would be extremely valuable.
Another recent phenomenon is the increased participation of the public in Internet-based activities. As computer literacy gradually increases, and prices of xe2x80x9cInternet-enabledxe2x80x9d computer systems continue to decline, a growing number of people are using the Internet to obtain information and do business. Significantly, those persons who are relatively more likely to be Internet users are also more inclined be interested in finding a way to finance education for themselves or members of their families.
It would be desirable to have a system which enables people to obtain education related financial assistance, and which also enables businesses to obtain information regarding college and pre-college age consumers. The system should additionally be capable of reaching large numbers of widely dispersed people using modern information technology such as the Internet.
In accordance with the invention, an automated system and method are disclosed for providing a contest to multiple, geographically dispersed contest participants. With the disclosed system, the participants are interconnected by a computer network, such as the internet, and each participant""s probability of winning the contest may be increased by his or her performing certain xe2x80x9cchance activitiesxe2x80x9d associated with the contest. The activities, for example, provide a contest sponsor with information about the contest participants, and/or expose the participants to advertising information. The disclosed system advantageously provides prompt and/or periodic feedback to contest participants regarding their current chances of winning the contest. The notification of current chances may be issued in response to a request by a participant, or in response to a participant performing one or more of the activities associated with the contest.
In an illustrative embodiment employing World Wide Web (WWW) technology, chance activities performed by contest participants to obtain xe2x80x9cchancesxe2x80x9d are associated with web page access requests. In this embodiment, a web page request associated with a chance activity is intercepted based on a predetermined characteristic of the request. During processing of the intercepted web page request, the disclosed system operates in response to a unique identifier associated with the contest participant, and a unique identifier associated with the chance activity. A determination is made as to whether the chance is to be credited to an individual chance account associated with the contest participant, referred to as the xe2x80x9cindividual chancesxe2x80x9d of the participant. If so, the contest participant""s individual chance account is incremented by the newly earned chance, and the newly earned chance is also added to a xe2x80x9ctotal chancesxe2x80x9d variable associated with the contest. In this way, each chance that a participant earns effectively enters their name one more time in the associated contest.
An updated probability that the participant will win the contest may be obtained by request or in response to a participant performing a chance activity. The disclosed system advantageously avoids frequent updates to the individual chances and total chances variables in the contest server by maintaining and periodically updating copies of these variables in other server systems associated with the contest. At a predetermined time, the disclosed system selects one of the contest participants as a contest winner. The contest winner may then be provided with an award associated with the contest, such as a college scholarship.
The disclosed contest server provides many advantageous features. These features include a simple deployment process, in which the creation and deployment of a new chance activity involves entering only a small amount of information regarding the chance activity into a web based form interface. A new chance identifier is thereby obtained, which can be conveniently embedded within the HTML code of a web page.
The disclosed system also permits using a large number of chance activities to earn chances. In particular, earning chances may be tied to a wide variety of actions and content, for example clicking on a banner ad or filling out a form to make a purchase.
Another advantageous feature is that chance allocation and odds calculations may be performed efficiently. Specifically, the disclosed system allocates chances to a participant""s individual chances account on the contest server as soon as they have been earned, and dynamically updates the odds of a given participant winning the contest as they earn chances by traversing and/or interacting with other server systems associated with the contest.
The present system further permits targeted contests and chances. Specific contests and chance activities may be made available to all participants, or may be tailored to specific subsets of potential participants based on participant and/or contest profiles.
Additionally, the disclosed contest server enables customized sponsorship of other participants. In this regard, a participant may perform chance activities to earn chance credits that are to be credited to a sponsored participant. Sponsoring participants may customize the allocation of the chances that they earn, in whole or in part, among one or more sponsored participants.
In this way a contest system is provided enabling people to obtain education related financial assistance, and also enabling businesses to obtain information regarding college and pre-college age consumers and their families. The system is advantageously capable of reaching large numbers of widely dispersed people using modern communications technology such as the Internet.